Writing, writing and a bit of history, Plantagenets mainly

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The BBC recently produced a beautifully shot, wonderfully acted, version of this play as part of their Hollow Crown series. Unlike the old ‘televised play’ versions or the modern setting/Shakespearean language treatments, the Hollow Crown managed to combine faithfulness to his written word and historical accuracy with powerfully delivered scenes. Such scenes did not require you understand every one of Shakespeare’s carefully chosen and very poetic stanzas. From the voices, accents, actions and scenery you can really feel Shakespeare’s meaning bursting through. All of sudden certain lines or verses capture your imagination and stick with you.

Having been struggling to get my battle scenes just right, I don’t know why I didn’t think of accessing Shakespeare earlier. He is the master of summing up in very few words so much of the emotion of war – and really, however much detail you want to add of the mechanics of war, it is the emotions you want to engage in the reader.

I’ve included an extract below, of one the passage, as I heard them delivered by John Hurt in the Hollow Crown version, the hairs on the back of my neck stood up on end.